January 2005 - gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

National Web library do-able, affordable, visionary
by Wallace J.McLean 10 Jan '05

10 Jan '05

Full text posted here with Prof. Geist's kind permission: Toronto Star 2005.01.10 D03 Michael Geist Law Bytes --------------------------------------------------- National Web library do-able, affordable, visionary --------------------------------------------------- In the mid-1990s, Ottawa established a bold new vision for the Internet in Canada. The centrepiece was a commitment to establish national Internet access from coast to coast to coast, supported by a program that would enable the country to quickly become the first in the world to connect every single school, no matter how small or large, to the Internet. Not only did Canada meet its goal, but it completed the program ahead of schedule. As we enter the middle of this decade, the time has come for Industry Minister David Emerson and his colleagues to articulate a new future- oriented vision for the Canadian Internet. While the last decade centred on access to the Internet, the dominant issue this decade is focused on access to the content on the Internet. To address that issue, the federal government should again think big. One opportunity is to greatly expand the National Library of Canada's digital efforts by becoming the first country in the world to create a comprehensive national digital library. The library, which would be fully accessible online, would contain a digitally scanned copy of every book, government report, and legal decision ever published in Canada. A national digital library would provide unparalleled access to Canadian content in English and French along with aboriginal and heritage languages such as Yiddish and Ukrainian. The library would serve as a focal point for the Internet in Canada, providing an invaluable resource to the education system and ensuring that access to knowledge is available to everyone, regardless of economic status or geographic location. >From a cultural perspective, the library would establish an exceptional vehicle for promoting Canadian creativity to the world, leading to greater awareness of Canadian literature, science, and history. By extending the library to government documents and court decisions, it would help meet the broader societal goal of providing all Canadians with open access to their laws and government policies. Moreover, since the government holds the copyright associated with its own reports and legal decisions, it is able to grant complete, unrestricted access to all such materials immediately alongside the approximately 100,000 Canadian books that are already part of the public domain. Creating virtual libraries to complement the world's great physical libraries is already underway. Project Gutenberg, an all-volunteer initiative, has succeeded in bringing thousands of public domain texts to the Web. Last summer, the British Library unveiled an ambitious plan to digitize and freely post on the Internet thousands of historical newspapers that are now in the public domain. That plan will bring more than one million pages of history to the Internet, including work from a young Charles Dickens. Last month Google announced that it had reached agreement with several of the world's leading research libraries, including ones at Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, Oxford, and the New York Public Library, to scan more than 15 million books into its search archive. Once the Google project is completed, the general public will enjoy complete, full-text access to thousands of books that are now part of the public domain because the term of copyright associated with those books has expired. For books that remain subject to copyright, Google will still scan a copy of the book, but will only grant the general public more modest access to its content, providing users with smaller excerpts of the work - a policy that is consistent with principles of fair use under copyright law. The Google project epitomizes the essence of the copyright balance. The public will benefit from unrestricted access to works in the public domain along with more limited access to other work, all without the need to seek any prior permission. Authors will still enjoy copyright protection in their work and will frequently find that greater access leads to increased commercial success. While digitally scanning more than 10 million Canadian books and documents is a daunting task, the Google project illustrates that it is financially feasible. Reports suggest that it will cost Google approximately $10 to scan each book. Assuming similar costs for a Canadian project and a five-year timeline, the $20 million annual price tag represents a fraction of the total governmental commitment toward Canadian culture and Internet development. In fact, the most significant barriers to a national digital library do not arise from fiscal challenges but rather from two potential copyright reforms currently winding their way through the system. First, the federal government is contemplating reversing the decade-old policy of avoiding Internet licensing by creating a new licensing system for Internet content that would create new restrictions to accessing online content. By proposing a very narrow definition of what can be accessed without compensation, the plan would effectively force millions of Canadian students to pay for access to content that is otherwise publicly available. Despite opposition from the education community, the proposal is marching forward, constituting a significant setback to the goal of encouraging Internet use in Canada. Given the Supreme Court of Canada's recent commitment to copyright balance and robust user rights, it is clear that for most uses no license is needed to provide schools with appropriate access to online content such as a potential national digital library. With this in mind, this proposal should be quickly scrapped. Second, the Canadian Heritage Minister Liza Frulla's Copyright Policy Branch recently announced that this year it plans to launch a public consultation on a proposal to extend the term of copyright in Canada from its current 50 years after the death of the author to at least 70 years after death (authors enjoy exclusive copyright in their work from the moment of creation until 50 years after they die). Extending the copyright term would deal a serious blow to a national digital library because it would instantly remove thousands of works from the public domain. Although the U.S. and European Union have extended their copyright terms by an additional 20 years, the vast majority of the world's population lives in countries that have not. Those countries have recognized that an extension is unsupportable from a policy perspective. It will not foster further creative activity, it is not required under international intellectual property law, and it effectively constitutes a massive transfer of wealth from the public to the heirs of a select group of copyright holders. Given the economic and societal dangers associated with a copyright term extension, even moving forward with a consultation constitutes an embarrassing case of putting the interests of a select few ahead of the public interest. A new year is traditionally a time for bold, new resolutions. As Parliamentarians return to Ottawa, they should be encouraged to seize the opportunity to establish a national vision for the Internet that will again propel Canada into a global leadership position. Supported by appropriate copyright policies, a national digital library comprised of every Canadian book ever published would provide an exceptional resource for Canadians at home as well as advantageously promote the export of Canadian culture abroad. Michael Geist is the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He is on-line at www.michaelgeist.ca. The opinions expressed herein are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Ottawa.

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Moore's Law (was Murphy's Law)
by maitri venkat-ramani 10 Jan '05

10 Jan '05

Sorry, between my cold medicine intake and dealing with cantankerous video cards, it seems my Freudian slip was showing. Corrected message below. Laughs, Maitri --- maitri venkat-ramani <maitriv(a)yahoo.com> wrote: I don't see the usefulness of comparing our growth to Moore's Law as even recent advances in computing is rendering this Law obsolete. Take my world of geological visualization, for instance. As explained by one of the specialists at Landmark Graphics, "With Linux 64-bit, you can have an unlimited volume of RAM on the system. The historical limit for the 32-bit system was around 2GB. Now, we're seeing systems that have 16GB of memory. No longer does compute power double every 18 months at the same price ... when things scale by 10 times, it's no longer just faster - you're in a different world." Granted, my system is not going to run at full spec speed at any given time owing to bandwidth quirks, etc., but it sure outdoes Moore's Law nowadays. If we need something to which to compare our growth rates, we should define our own new baseline curve and see how our growth proceeds from there. Since I personally don't know how to create one of these benchmarks, I will stop here and let someone else recommend. Maitri __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Easier than ever with enhanced search. Learn more. http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250

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Fwd: Check out City Journal Autumn 2004 | The Classics in the Slums by Jonath...
by Gutenberg9443＠aol.com 10 Jan '05

10 Jan '05

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Re: [gutvol-d] Re: German texts and the m-dash
by Joshua Hutchinson 10 Jan '05

10 Jan '05

Inka (I'm assuming that's who did the HTML version) must not have used any of GutCutter-style tools BilFlis over at DP created! ;) -- to — is not a requirement, as far as I know, but it is something that I see most people do. I see no problem with replacing -- with <space>—<space> in the HTML, though. It would be a very simply find/replace to do so, too. Josh ----- Original Message ----- From: "Karl Eichwalder" <ke(a)gnu.franken.de> To: gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: German texts and the m-dash Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2005 16:25:40 +0100 > > "Joshua Hutchinson" <joshua(a)hutchinson.net> writes: > > > In my experience, HTML files DO currently switch -- to > > Under those circumstances something went wrong with > http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/3/4/14340/14340-h/14340-h.htm . > > > However, the text files use -- because the entity equivalent > > doesn't exist in 7bit ASCII. > > That's okay. > > > I think I've seen this discussion before on DP forums. If I remember > > correctly, it was decided to stick to the xyz--xyz standard simply to > > avoid confusion and complication. > > I'm not sure whether the German reading community will get used to it ;-) > > -- > http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/ | ,__o > | _-\_<, > | (*)/'(*) > Key fingerprint = F138 B28F B7ED E0AC 1AB4 AA7F C90A 35C3 E9D0 5D1C > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d

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FW: [gutvol-d] Project Gutenberg Original Directory Structure
by John Hagerson 09 Jan '05

09 Jan '05

I believe that there would be an issue redirecting some links of the type napol* because we have the same book name in two different ebook* directories for two different eBooks. Steve Thomas wrote: That's great, exactly what I wanted -- and I see that napol10.zip also takes you to the catalog page. So I assume you are redirecting napol10.* Would it be possible to also redirect napol* -- so that you'd get the catalog page regardless of version? That would mean that anyone with an old link would then discover thru the catalog that there was a later version.

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FW: [gutvol-d] Fw: [gweekly] 15, 000th Project Gutenberg eBook Released
by John Hagerson 09 Jan '05

09 Jan '05

Steve Harris said: It also raises a difficult issue: If we are going to do a significant chunk of the public domain in a reasonably short period, it probably doesn't matter in what order we do the books. If we are only going to get to 50K over the next 5 years or to 100K over the next 10 years, we should probably give some thought to where we should put our efforts (e.g. what is the relative value of "The Yale Shakespeare" on top of the several versions of each play we already have?) We are all volunteers. You can lead volunteers by inspiring them; an effort to "herd" volunteers by dictating what they can and cannot do can easily cause them to scatter (or disappear). If you would care to share your grand vision, please do -- I could use a dose of inspiration today. Cloudy in Chicago, John Hagerson

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Re: [gutvol-d] Project Gutenberg Original Directory Structure
by Joshua Hutchinson 09 Jan '05

09 Jan '05

----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Hart" <hart(a)pglaf.org> > > > On Thu, 6 Jan 2005, Joshua Hutchinson wrote: > > > No disrespect, but ... > > > > That seems like a collosal waste of time. > > It's not your time, or much of our time, it is the time of voluneers who > have asked to do this project, and there have been multiple requests. > I agree. However, Jared was basically asking for comment on the idea, which I provided. Personally, I see it as effort that would be better spent elsewhere. I am the last person to dictate how a volunteer should spend his/her time, though (since I'm sure plenty of people see TEI as a waste of time as well, which is my pet project). I apologize, Jared, if I sounded like I was trying to stop you from working on this. I was simply stating my opinion of the project. Josh

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no flame. suggestion, comments, apology
by Gutenberg9443＠aol.com 09 Jan '05

09 Jan '05

First-- As everybody seeks to get copyright laws revised, I have a suggestion that will warm the heart (and the cooking fire) of every writer on earth. I recommend that regardless of how long a period of time a copyright extends, the first year that a publisher does not pay the writer at least $2000 in that year, the book should be considered effectively out of print, and the copyright should automatically revert to the writer. During all those years that the publisher is sitting on a book it's not making an effort to distribute, it's often the case that the writer could do other things with that book, even--in some cases--turn it over to PGLAF. Someone asked me what my longest-surviving book has been. It is SCENE OF THE CRIME, from Writer's Digest Books, and it has been in print since 1992. The first printing sold out before the official release date, because of the Writer's Digest Book Club. After that, it remained viable, though the entire rest of the series it was part of died, as a result of three unexpected events: (1) A lot of police officers bought it on the grounds that it was more thorough and less boring than their official police science books; (2) The O. J. Simpson trial showed a lot of people what happens when a crime scene is worked by total idiots, and I was asked to comment on that fact on nationwide television; and (3) the CSI shows have been a success. My most recent royalty check, though, was pretty small, and I doubt it will make it through another year. It needs to be thoroughly revised and I'm not up to doing the work, and WD people don't want it revised anyway. They prefer to kill it. It has earned me a total of about $18,000. I spent an entire calendar year working on it. Despite the fact that crime scene work had been my job for years, I was determined to be totally correct and up-to-date with my research. At times I had as many as 75 library and ILL books in my office; as I also slept in my office at that time, things got pretty crowded. The last year I worked for the telephone company I earned $30,000. Admittedly I would far rather write a good book than sell telephone systems to businesses, but since when did it become improper for people to have a job that they like rather than a job that they don't like? I really loved my police work. I'd wake up in the morning and think, "Oh, darn, I can't go to work today." I was one of the best fingerprint examiners on earth. I could do stuff the FBI couldn't do. I was called in to help FBI agents, Secret Service agents, postal inspectors, Marine Corps CID, and various small-town police agencies. It gave me an incredible feeling of power when I had just made a nonsuspect ident--that is, identified a criminal by no clue at all except fingerprints made in a place only the criminal could have made them, by cold-searching the prints through all the fingerprint cards we had--but there's no way on God's green earth that I could do that work now. I also cannot possibly sell telephone systems to businesses, at which I was marginal at best, or teach students to learn how to write, at which I was fair to middling competent. So I'm back where I started when I was seven years old. I can write. I can edit. I can wash the dishes if I can stay out of bed long enough to do it. I apologize for recent outbursts on my part. I hope at least some of you can understand why they have occurred. Now I am going to crawl back into the woodwork and resume anonymity. Anne

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Re: [gutvol-d] Is this a Project Gutenberg violation?
by JBuck814366460＠aol.com 09 Jan '05

09 Jan '05

I usually prefer either .txt or .html myself, LOL. PDF is also good (the new version coming out soon will offer Linux support, so I have heard. I run Red Hat Linux 9 on my machine in a dual-boot environment (alongside Wincrap XP) and will shortly upgrade RH9 to Fedora Core 3 once I finish downloading and burning the ISOs to CD-R next week. I LOVE my new DSL connection, it's very handy ;) Jared

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Re: [gutvol-d] Is this a Project Gutenberg violation?
by Aaron Cannon 09 Jan '05

09 Jan '05

Sorry I never got your discs to you. I found your original message, but I'm not sure what happened and why you didn't get your discs. If you would like me to send you a large quantity of discs, please e-mail me off list and let me know how many of each and which address to send them to. Thanks. Sincerely Aaron Cannon At 10:15 PM 1/8/2005, you wrote: >>PG offers CDs AND DVDs of its etext collections for FREE without you >>needing to pay a cent. This company, IMHO, is just trying to rip people >>off by making them pay for something you can get free of charge from PG >>just by asking. > > I've actually asked PG several times (via email) for copies of > the DVD so I can hand them out at my LUG[1] (I'm the president). It's > been a few months, and I haven't heard a single peep or reply to those > emails yet. > > That's partly why I'm mirroring it on my own here now. > > >David A. Desrosiers >desrod(a)gnu-designs.com >http://gnu-designs.com > > >_______________________________________________ >gutvol-d mailing list >gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org >http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > > >!DSPAM:41e0ae6489551659916029! >_______________________________________________ >gutvol-d mailing list >gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org >http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d -- E-mail: cannona(a)fireantproductions.com Skype: cannona MSN Messenger: cannona(a)hotmail.com (Do not send E-mail to the hotmail address.)

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